EXCESSIVE SLAUGHTER OF BUFFALOES. 29 



tonous landscape of the prairies, many years must pass 

 before the race will disappear from the North American 

 continent. 



Spite of the many enemies who, in so many ways, com- 

 pass their slaughter, the bisons still pasture in thousands 

 upon the grassy plains and ridges of the green Far 

 West. 



Yet it seems much to be desired that the American 

 Government should find some means of preventing the 

 extermination of these noble quadrupeds, which are so 

 great an ornament of the rolling prairies, and so valuable 

 a source of supply to the traveller or explorer bound for 

 Santa Fe or California. The reader may form some idea 

 of the numbers annually killed, from the fact that every 

 year upwards of nine hundred thousand hides are sold in 

 Canada and the United States. These hides are all the 

 spoil of female buffaloes, the skin of the male being too 

 thick and coarse to be easily tanned. 



The Indians, who derive their subsistence almost entirely 

 from the sale of these hides, preserve, however, a certain 

 quantity for their own use, employing them in the con- 

 struction of their tents, beds, canoes, and domestic utensils. 

 It should be added, in concluding the statistics of this sys- 

 tematic destruction, that the caravans which still cross the 

 prairies — comparatively few since the completion of the 

 great Pacific Railway — seem to find a pleasure in strewing 

 their route with the carcasses of bisons. Lastly, it is the 

 mission of eagles of all sizes, of the buzzards and the vul- 

 tures, to whiten the skeletons of the bovine race, which in 

 certain of the defiles and passes to the west of the Pvoeky 



